Florapass
English
Lesser Spearwort

Lesser Spearwort

Ranunculus flammula

Identify the Lesser Spearwort from a photo and log your finds with Florapass.

Coming soon to the App Store and Google Play.

How common: Common

Lesser Spearwort is a small yellow buttercup that loves very wet places. It grows along ditches, ponds and muddy shores across much of Europe. Its lower, creeping stems can root into the mud and help it spread. All parts are poisonous.

Did you know?

  • Stems often root at the lower joints, letting it form patches in soggy ground.
  • It can cross with the much smaller Creeping Spearwort.

About the species

Identification

A small perennial (10–40 cm) with mostly leaning, few-branched, nearly hairless stems that often root at the lower joints. Lower leaves have long stalks and oval to narrow blades with smooth or slightly toothed edges; upper leaves are shorter-stalked to stalkless and long, narrow. Flowers are bright yellow, usually single or a few together, about 1–2 cm across; the small green outer parts drop early. Later it bears tiny smooth hard seeds. Can be confused with Creeping Spearwort, which is smaller, more delicate, and has thinner creeping stems and tinier flowers. Flowers in Finland from June to August, sometimes into September.

Plant group

Herbaceous plants

Habitat

mire

Toxicity

A poisonous plant – do not taste it. Source: HUS Poison Information Centre (Finland), tel. 0800 147 111.

Flowering

Jun–Sep

About the habitat

Very wet ground: ditches, puddles and pond edges, muddy shores, springs, marshy woods, reclaimed mudflats and wet field edges. Often on clay-rich soils. Widespread up to southern Lapland; common in the south, scarcer further north.

Sources

Photo: Christian Fischer, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RanunculusFlammula4.jpg

Text: Pinkka: A Pohjolan kasveja - Rabelera-Ruta, CC BY 4.0 https://laji.fi/taxon/MX.37918

Text: Wikipedia (Finnish), CC BY-SA 4.0 https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ojaleinikki

See also